


Nightfall

by MaraudingManaged



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Azkaban, Grief/Mourning, Guilt, M/M, Minor Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-05
Updated: 2020-02-05
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:08:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22576078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaraudingManaged/pseuds/MaraudingManaged
Summary: Out there somewhere, Moony is looking up at the same sky, the same moon and stars. He will have forgotten, just for a moment, that a man named Sirius Black is supposed to have betrayed Remus Lupin, Lily, Harry, and James Potter. Sirius wonders if the wolf might be looking for it’s companion.A perverse part of him hopes he is.
Relationships: Sirius Black/Remus Lupin
Comments: 11
Kudos: 15
Collections: Spark of Silver





	Nightfall

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by Anonymous in the [SparkofSilver](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/SparkofSilver) collection. 



> Written for the Quills & Parchment Spark of Silver oneshot competition, I chose the following **prompt:**  
>  _Two people separated, but bonded by the idea/remembrance of looking at the same moon_
> 
> As always, all canon characters, plots, and situations from the Harry Potter series belong to JK Rowling and I make not a shiny penny from these words. Thank you to my wonderful beta, ArielSakura, for her support and work on this story to make my awful, miserable plots more awful and miserable 💛
> 
> Song lyrics are Lewis Capaldi's 'Someone You Loved' and were not part of the prompt.

**_Now the day bleeds into nightfall_ **

**_And you're not here_ **

**_To get me through it all_ **

Sirius shudders as the spectral form of the Dementor passes by the bars of his cell - blessedly uninterested in his huddled form. Even as he sat staring out the meager gap in his cell. The one almost hidden in the grey stone wall - the one some might call a window. 

Perhaps it had already taken it’s fill tonight. Perhaps it detected no joy in him. He doesn’t care either way, really - it doesn’t change the fact that he is here and everyone he has ever loved will know - if they don’t already - how badly he has betrayed them all. 

And he has, Sirius knows; even if it isn’t in the way they will all think when the Daily Prophet hits their desks. The image of his body being dragged through a disaster of body parts and broken cobblestones, cackling like the madman he thinks he might actually be, will become ingrained in their minds forever, and they will hate him. 

He hates  _ himself _ .

He wraps his arms around himself as he rocks back and forth on the pitifully thin mattress. The clothing he has been given is scant: whilst it technically covers him to the wrist and to the ankle, it is little better than tissue paper against the biting chill sweeping in from the North Sea. Should he dare move from his spot where he is tightly balled, the damp rock beneath his unclad feet leeches out what little warmth he is able to find when the wind gives respite and stops howling for a moment - just a moment - before it begins again. 

He curls in on himself further - because he deserves this. He knows he does. But as he looks out of the window into the encroaching darkness, he wishes that he’d been able to keep his head a little longer. Long enough for someone to talk sense into him, to help him make the better choice. 

Long enough to realise there were more important things than revenge - a lesson he should have already learnt. 

He wishes Remus had been there. Remus has always been the one able to hammer sense into his thick skull eventually when any of his other friends - sometimes even the girls - would only encourage his recklessness. But for some reason he hadn’t confided in Remus his secret pact with Lily, James and that… that  _ rat.  _

And now he pays the price. He has lost everyone he’s ever loved, everything he’s ever truly cherished. His brother and sister dead, his godson likely gone with Hagrid to who knows where... Hopefully to someone who would love him... and Remus. The other half of his ragged, broken soul will be left believing he betrayed them all. 

Sirius hugs himself tighter; his knuckles turn white, digging through the thin material and leaving half-moon indents in his skin as he weeps bitterly, icy tears stinging his face. He knows now that the reason he kept his silence from the man he loved - certainly more than his own life - is the discord Pettigrew sowed between them all with so little effort. With just a few words, spoken in the dark, in the quiet, when uncertainty was at its worst:  _ I think there’s a traitor amongst us. _

The dark thoughts begin to creep in, another after another,  _ so easily _ that he doesn’t realise that they’ve become oddly emphasised at first. That he is dwelling on them more than he would normally. That the feelings they invoke are more acute,  _ amplified _ . But the cold begins to grow and the ice begins to form on the exposed, damp stone in spidery fractals; and Sirius knows that it is one of the Dementors, coming for another round. 

The panic swells in him, heart thudding heavily, and he scuttles further and further back into his corner as skeletal fingertips stretch through the bars. He turns his head to press it into the wall behind him, gaining a further inch of space from the terror-inducing creature clawing at the air between them. He feels the whimper rising in his chest and he is unable to suppress it as the sound crawls from his throat in short, staccato breaths. The urge to vomit grows until it is nearly irrepressible when memories from his tormented childhood at his mother’s bloody hands are wrenched to the forefront of his mind. He knows that wasn’t always his life, that he found something so much  _ more  _ later on but he can’t… he can’t  _ remember _ . Those memories slip from his mind like water through his frozen fingers and all he is left with is  _ her _ .

And Pettigrew. 

No longer a man worthy of the name they had forged together under the banner of the Marauders.  _ Pettigrew _ . 

Sirius spits the name in his mind, gathering all of his hatred close before the feeling is stolen from him, and a cackling laughter fills the air. It’s an echo, a reminder of his own manic roaring only days before. Or was it weeks? He doesn’t know. Merlin how he wishes he hadn’t laughed, hadn’t left to carve out his revenge.

The Dementor, he tells himself as he feels ice shatter on his cheek, the hot tear escaping from sticky lids breaks the one that had fallen only minutes before. 

His hands feel slick with sweat as he brings them up to defend himself against the swell of misery and fear and agony that is growing in the centre of his chest, and he wishes that he could summon a Patronus to protect him from the worst of it. 

A Patronus. _ His  _ P atronus. __

_ Padfoot.  _

He doesn’t need a wand - the Animagus state is so natural and entwined deeply with his magic after they completed the change for the first time in 5th year. The first time when he… 

It hurts too much to think about, that moment. The boy-turned-man who had held him, kissed him,  _ loved him _ . The gentle soul whose gratitude knew no bounds. It ruins him, entirely, that he is the reason Remus will be in pain. Suffering. 

_ Alone.  _

Instead, Sirius focuses on how it feels to be the great black dog, and less on how miserable his existence as a man is. The feeling of running, barking; the freedom it granted him as he wrestled with the wolf called Moony and the stag called Prongs. A rat called… No. He halts himself there. Those memories - that rat - are dead to him now.

The change isn’t instant, but after a few moments there is the sensation of paws scrabbling on rock, and of a heavy coat that warms him through. He can hear the sounds of those wailing alongside him more acutely, but they mean less to him than they did before. The plate of rotting food doesn’t seem so unappealing as it did when he was a man and he gladly gulps it down; even the sting of the Dementor’s wrath is long gone, though it surely must be still on the other side of the bars that separated them. 

The Dementor doesn’t recognise him as prey - because the animal he has become doesn’t _feel_ \- not in the same way that its human counterpart does. It worries him, sometimes, that very little changes when he is Padfoot and not Sirius Black. The colour is already so leached from the cell and the inky sky outside that he can barely recognise the difference. 

But as Padfoot, he has warmth - and he doesn’t feel so alone. 

Because out there somewhere, Moony is looking up at the same sky, the same moon and stars. He will have forgotten, just for a moment, that a man named Sirius Black is supposed to have betrayed Remus Lupin, Lily, Harry, and James Potter. Sirius wonders if the wolf might be looking for it’s companion.

A perverse part of him hopes he is. 

He tilts his muzzle to the moon, and whines - over the cacophony of waves and screams and cackles - into the sea-stained sky.

* * *

**_I let my guard down_ **

**_And then you pulled the rug_ **

**_I was getting kinda used to being someone you loved_ **

Remus stares at the fading burgundies, the burnt oranges and the muted golds; rich in the fading November sun, even as it falls beneath the horizon earlier and earlier each day as winter sets in. The brightness of it burns a silhouette in his retinas, but he can’t find it within him to care; because in a little more than half an hour it won’t matter what he does to himself in his human form. 

And there is far worse pain he harbours in this frail frame. 

He paces around the simple one-bedroom cottage, restless fingers drumming along the ratty wooden furniture. He is of half a mind to stay and tear the place to shreds: to rip apart every lie, hack at every memory until nothing but shards remain. Destroy every galleon that the fucking traitor spent on this place - supposedly for  _ him, _ but now... Remus realises it was only to keep his cover. To keep the suspicious thoughts away from where they should be aimed.

He wonders if it was also to try and assuage some of his guilt, but he doubts it. If Sirius could betray his brother in all but blood without a second thought, allow his godson to meet his death… then Remus knows that he wouldn’t give the man he was supposed to love anything but a passing glance. 

Remus hopes, with an anger burning so bright it threatens to engulf him whole, that Azkaban is killing him. 

He raises a fist - frail he may look, but this close to moonrise, he is stronger than any man. He wouldn’t even need his claws and teeth to destroy everything that they built together. But as he prepares to rip the house to pieces, like his heart, the bitter truth comes upon him that he has nowhere left to go should he lay waste to the cottage - his only home now that he has absolutely no-one left who might take pity on him. Remus is truly an island, cut off from everything that made him feel worthwhile - that made him feel more wizard than wolf. 

His skin is itching, muscles churning underneath, blood boiling deep in his veins. Remus can still smell him, no matter how many cleaning charms he uses and how much muggle bleach he has resorted to in order to erase the scent of Padfoot, of Sirius - of the man he loved more than  _ anything _ in this world. 

The man who didn’t love him back.

The man who  _ betrayed _ him.

A growl tears itself from his throat. He tells himself it was a growl, and not the whimper he knows it really is. He needs to go out. He needs to leave the house if he has a hope of leaving the place standing. He can send an owl tomorrow to one of the few remaining Order members with a plea to help him pack everything up and clear away all of the last memories - perhaps whilst he is in bed, wishing for the death that never comes for him after the moon sets. A death he would gladly give now if it meant James and Lily lived and Sirius died…

His gut wrenches. Remus thinks for a moment it’s because his thoughts are so incongruous with his heart, but then his fingers cling to the edge of the dining table as he doubles over, pain lancing through his abdomen to his stomach. He is running out of time, and it is only instinct that guides him now as he races out of the back door and into the woods. He has minutes - scant moments before he will forget it all - and it is clear that the lupine part of him needs to roam wild tonight. 

He drags at his clothes as he goes, kicking off his shoes and feeling the damp grass flick against his feet as he runs. His shirt is gone, the trousers, even his boxers, are ripped from his body as he comes to a halt in the little copse he uses to transform whenever he is home.

_Home_ , he snorts. As if it could feel like home now. 

This time his change is silent - in such contrast to every moon since his fifth year at Hogwarts. There are no friends to coax a laugh, no jibes, no comfort, no whispered promises of love. 

Alone. 

He is alone. 

Entirely. 

Naked, Remus looks up, and there they are: the cursed, silvery shards of light filtering through the leaves, kissing his scarred skin. 

There is no warning - no time to prepare. The way his bones rip from their sockets and his skin tears open is comforting for once. The agony in his chest is now externalised; his hatred, misery and heartache made flesh. He screams - and a roar that would never have come from his throat had the moon not captured him in its thrall rattles throughout the trees. 

Heavy front paws land on the ground, knives shooting into the joints and up the bones in jarring spikes. He welcomes it, revels in it, as the vertebrae in his spine align with painful pops and his jaw extends, cracking and changing his teeth into ones that will hunt, maim, and kill. 

He is Remus no longer; the wizard who loves Sirius Black is no more. All there is now is the wolf, and for the first time in his life he willingly surrenders to it. More than that, he _ relishes  _ the chance to distance himself from the torment in his chest, in his heart, in his  _ soul. _

But the wolf still knows. The wolf knows his pack is gone; so it is in grief that he tilts his muzzle to the moon, greets the cloudless sky, and releases a mournful howl.


End file.
